Splurge! Dior Addict Extreme Paparazzi & Laura Mercier Second Skin Cheek Colour Rose Petal

Not a very recent splurge but one that took place before my recent blogging hiatus, I fell in love with the idea of the Dior Addict Extreme lipstick in Lucky when I saw it on a number of blogs and was determined to buy it as soon as I could.  In the meantime I dealt with my immediate need for a sheer, glossy, balm like lipstick by buying Revlon Lip Butter in Raspberry Pie.  As you know I do try to not splurge too often, my budget isn't limitless and I like to get a lot of bang for my buck.  So when I did finally check out the Dior Addict Extreme lipsticks I just couldn't justify buying Lucky, the colour was just too similar, or if not similar, not different ENOUGH to warrant spending £24 on.  But I wanted one!  (horribly in touch with my inner two year old, I know)  After swatching all of them on the back of my hand the one I kept coming back to was Paparazzi and even whilst I knew that such an expensive lipstick should be purchased in a very wearable, every day shade Paparazzi's juicy berry'ness was really calling my name!

In shade

In direct light - more colour accurate

It does feel lovely to wear, the usual balm like texture all of this sort of lipstick share and no discernible taste or smell.  I did also buy a Bobbi Brown lip pencil to wear with this as my lips do really need some defining although I still cant decide whether a defined edge, even blended out, really works with a sheerer lipstick and I think it affects the colour even if it is only slightly.  All in all £24 well spent, I am crazy about the packaging and I completely love my splurge lippy!

Blusher has long been an absolute minefield for me.  Even when I seem to think I have found my hg I catch sight of my reflection in the wrong light and it looks shocking.  Now that my beloved Estee Lauder Double Wear light has dealt with my foundation issues I feel much better able to deal with the blusher situation and on my birthday shopping spree in Leeds I decided that a really good blusher was top of my list.  

I had Nars in mind when I set out but couldn't find one that really worked on me, they were too opaque and just too "blusher" rather than "natural ethereal glow only gained from brisk exercise, a healthy diet and a love of quiet living" (oh yes I demand a lot from my make up!) This wasn't helped by the fact that the lovely girl on the Nars counter grabbed a big, huge, massive brush, swirled it generously in a bright, candy pink blush and then, kill me please, splodged it right on to the fattest bit of my cheek and made roundy swoshing motions.  It was all I could not to slap her hand away!  It was only then I took a look at her blusher.  Should have done that first as this was clearly her "technique".  

I blended it in as much as I could and beat a hasty path to the Laura Mercier counter.  This was staffed by a porcelain skinned beauty wearing the most flattering and subtle make up I have ever seen on a Sales Assistant, made the ladies on the MAC counter look like jaded harlots.  She spent a couple of minutes looking at my colouring and skin tone, insisted that pink not peach was the way to go - which was what I was wanting to hear - and put a delicate hint of Rose Petal right where I wear my blusher - more of a contour than on the apple of my cheeks.  I was instantly smitten and couldn't get my purse open fast enough.

I know it looks really quite peachy here but its pink, I promise!

Rose Petal is beautiful it gives an incredibly sheer wash of colour like no other blusher I have ever worn and which is exactly what I want in a blusher.  I am too prone to pinkness and colouring up to want to add too much in the way of colour, the hint of a flush Rose Petal gives is perfect and I would strongly recommend Laura Mercier blusher to any pale skinned readers looking for that effect.  It wasn't until I got home that I remembered that Strawberry Blond had once said that the Laura Mercier Second Skin Cheek Colours would be exactly what I was looking for in the way of blush - not only is she gorgeous, she knows her stuff!

So here they are then, the two of them in action!

Bloody glasses really mark my face - should NOT have gone to Specsavers.

This one probably shows the blusher off best

And this one the lipstick, and my rather sleepy looking left eye. God I am weird looking!

 The blusher is £20.50 and for me worth every penny!

Revlon Lip Butters - at long last

I have wanted these since I first saw them blogged about and the waiting has felt like ages, so worth it though!

Looking at previous blog posts I wasn't sure if Candy Apple or Cherry Pie would be my best bet, as it was Boots only had Candy Apple so I had no choice.  I decided to go all out and get Tutti Fruitti too, have a fancy for a nice bright orange and then I hemmed and hawed for ages and opted for Raspberry Pink although wasn't sure at all that it would be a colour I would wear.

Candy Apple, Tutti Fruitti and Raspberry Pie - seriously is there anything nicer than a brand new lippy? Three maybe!

Was so excited had to do an immediate swatchathon!  Top pic is Candy Apple, middle is Raspberry Pie and finally Tutti Fruitti.  I have to say I think Raspberry Pie might be a surprise fave.  Not entirely sure that Tutti Fruitti is working on me, but you know who it does look fab on???

I should have said - this is Emily, she gets her looks from me, obvs!

Bloody typical!


I am guessing everyone that got to Boots today came away with a handful, enabled as we all were by the 3 for 2 offer and quite possibly the extra bonus of £2 off Revlon with the latest Advantage card mailer.  So come on, share, which ones did you get?


 

New lipstick! Estee Lauder Pure Color Gloss stick - Honey Pink

I love new lipstick!  I was on a mission on Friday to come home with  something as far away from my usual pinky/browny mlbb shade and had decided I would go as far out of my comfort zone as necessary to get the desired look!   A quick shout out on twitter resulted in lots of great suggestions from loads of people - ladies thank you all.  The only problem I had was that the brand had to be available in either House of Fraser or Boots, so I was fairly limited - MAC, Laura Mercier and Illamasqua weren't happening!

First off I had a look at the Dior Addict Extreme lipsticks - Ruth had posted some pics of new ones not due out yet and they had set me off on my lemming for something out of the ordinary.  Whilst I quite liked the available Dior shades lots of them had glittery bits in them and at 45 I wonder if blingy sparkly lips are just too little girl?  It's probably down to the individual but I prefer cream lipstick to anything shimmery or glittery and there weren't any Dior creams that were floating my boat. 

Next off I visited the Estee Lauder stand after several recommendations that the Pure Color lipsticks were exactly what I was after.  Having had a bit of a play I decided that if I was going out of my comfort zone in terms of colour one way of diffusing the shock would be to go for something sheer rather than too opaque a lipstick.  The Pure Color Gloss sticks are pretty much that, gorgeous colour in a glossy finish but in a stick rather than a lip gloss tube - not a fan of sticky lip gloss.  As soon as I tested Pink Honey on the tip of my index finger - I have been told its the closest in colour to the skin of your lip so a better indicator than the back of your hand, no idea if its true but it usually works out well for me! - I knew it was The One.  

The lady on the Estee Lauder counter in HoF in Huddersfield is fantastic - I have since been googling all things EL and the one recurring theme is that the ladies that work on EL counters can generally be relied upon to be knowledgeable, willing to help, generous with samples and pretty bloody lovely! The one in Huddersfield is all of those things.  

I was having a look at the Double Wear Light foundation as the website foundation finder had suggested that one for me and she said had I heard about their new foundation, Invisible Fluid, I said that I had and was hoping to get my hands on a sample at some point.  She said "go shop, get a coffee and when you come back past here nip in, I have just taken delivery of all my stuff - the samples are in the bottom box, if you give me a mo when you get back I'll sort you out a sample".  She actually offered, I didn't have to beg or feel like some nasty bludger, she actually just up and offered! And before I left she gave me a sample of the Double Wear Light into the bargain! Prior to all this she had handed me a teeny lip brush so I could apply some Pink Honey to my lips, its hard to tell how something works in indoor lighting so I said I was going to see how it felt for a little while and check I was still happy with the colour when I was outside but that if I was I would be back.

When I nipped back 20 minutes later to say yes please to the Pink Honey she had dug out her samples of Invisible Fluid, checked the one she thought would work best for me, 1CN1, and decanted some into a bottle for me to take home.  

Corally pink, pinky coral?

Gorgeous and glossy

The top of this swipe of lipstick is the most colour accurate of all!

So pictures.  It's bloody hard to take pictures that show off foundation isn't it.  In these I am wearing the Invisible Fluid.  I wore it to the gym this morning and a group of ladies stopped me as I got off the bike to ask what I was wearing on my face as my foundation looked so lovely!  I had been cycling at a fair pace for 20mins so had a bit of a glow on!  I can honestly say I have never been complimented by strangers on my foundation before, so that's a pretty huge plus for this one!

 You can probably see that it looks nice, but I don't really think the picture does it justice, it has a lovely freshness to it, so my skin looks dewy without shine.

Jesus, now you can probably understand why, as a rule, Steve does as he is asked. Or else.

 Please excuse scary facial expressions I was more concerned with the light being right than how my gurning was looking!


And finally, the close up of the lipstick.  You'll need a strong stomach for this cracker!

Please ignore crater sized chin pores, fine lines round lip and huge, dark, terrible nostrils. Lippy's nice though, no?!

 As I hope you can see the lipstick is a glossy peachy shade and it completely brightens my face, I am really pleased with it!


In my next post I am going to show some pics of me wearing the Double Wear Light foundation, at the moment I am strongly leaning towards purchasing this over the Invisible Fluid.  I will explain all in my next post!

Bourjois Sweet Kisses Lipstick - Rose Seduisant

You know when you find your "perfect" lipstick, when the formula, the packaging the colour and the wear all come together?  This lipstick, for me, is one of those.  

I recently wore a bright red lipstick and whilst the orangey bright red I wore I didn't love I did really like how glam a red coloured lip made me feel.  I had my heart set on a dark vampy red, but decided that it would just be unwearable and was lurking around in Boots admiring the packaging of the Bourjois lipsticks when I spotted this shade which is I guess a berry pink shade in the bullet but on my lips looks quite red without being over the top.

What Bourjois say about it:

Bourjois Sweet Kisses Lipstick dress your smile in intense radiant colour thanks to the unique complex of waxes and oils which coats the pigments for ultra luminosity. Voila! A luminous satin finish in one stroke!
A new generation of gliding formula, plus a selection of fine and infinitely light oils, which offer maximum comfort upon application. Argan oil gives upto 8 hours moisturisation for ultra kissable lips.
A true beauty accessory!

Years ago I had a Lancome lipstick in this sort of shade and I loved it.  What I really like about this is how comfortable it is to wear, all those oils really do seem to help prevent my lips drying out and I love the satin finish, bit of sheen without a heap of shine!  I have been wearing it with a bobbi brown pencil to prevent bleeding and then applying it with a brush for a really neat application - its not the sort of colour I would want to smear all over the place!  Although it does work nicely if I just pat a little on for a less "done" look as well.

In shade

In sunlight - this is very colour accurate

I feel this really brightens up my face and love that it feels really comfortable on.  It has no real taste or smell and I like that too. 

The 2 above were a rush job when I got in from shopping as was dying to try this!

This one I made a bit more effort for - including the taupe and grey from the Ruby & Millie quad!

The packaging is great too, although it took Em and I a while to work out how to get into it! You push down the silver button and the lipstick comes completely out of the purple case and then slots back in with a satisfying click, very novel and more importantly very secure.

You can buy it from Boots here for £7.99, I will definitely be going back for more. 

Bit of a haul - Clarins Rouge Prodige in Lilac Pink

Had huge plans to go into Leeds yesterday and then it rained so Em decided she didn't fancy mooching in the rain so settled for Huddersfield instead.  Had a fair idea what I wanted to headed straight to Boots.

Wasn't blown away by the colours in the Rouge Prodige range, seemed to be a bit more shimmer and sparkle than I had anticipated and I guarantee that Clarins would sell a whole heap more lippy if the testers were displayed next to an actual real live lipstick in the proper case, the tester ones look meh and the actual lipstick is a thing of such beauty I needed one for the case alone.

Isn't that beautiful. Makes whipping it out in public for touch ups pretty much obligatory.

I settled for Lilac Pink, which if I am being completely honest is pretty much the same shade as my Illamasqua lip gloss in Move, but with the shimmer I claim to hate.

Told you I only wanted it for the case!  Actually I do like the colour on me, it looks like this:

 If I am standing in the shade, or like this:

 If standing in the sun!  Still looking smug thought, I honestly have no idea what thats about. I got a couple of other things too yesterday but am going to do them in seperate posts, just because I can.  One of them is a product that will be of particular interest to my reader/s that suffer from rosacea or any skin redness.  Just need to get non-smug photos of it in action!

Illamasqua - Lip Gloss in Move

If you have been reading ihavemostlybeen recently you will know that I am having a crazy love affair with a nude lip. Not any old nude lip, my own nude lip. What the hell am I on about.  I have always worn colour on my lips - as a glasses wearer I felt colour on my eyes was a waste of time so stuck to a bit of mascara and some brown eye liner and added the colour I needed on my lips.  I have worn red lipstick and sometimes I think I look lovely in it but it does scare me.  I tend to stick to mlbb shades and I like a creamy glossy texture and it has to be sparkle/shimmer/glitter free, really not a hint of a shimmer or I am going to look 90.

At the Trafford Centre I got into conversation with the SA on the Illmasaqua counter, we had a play with the new Toxic nature collection - Delirium is the only thing I think I might need from that tbh! - we talked foundation, am tempted to ask for a sample of the light base at some point and then I apologised and said I had to go and check out the MAC viva glam gaga 2 lipstick.  She asked why and I explained about  my new found love of nude.

"Nude, really? Hmm right.  Really?" was her reply, which led me to thinking that perhaps she didn't see me as a nude lip kinda gal.  Anyway I slipped across the way and had a play with the MAC vgg2 (it is luscious, creamy, proper beige nude and I wanted it sooooo much) but Emily said "Mum, I love you. That looks fricking horrible on you.  I love you, I really do, you do know that don't you" and hauled me back to Illamasqua land.  Whereupon the SA did me a matt peach lip, on the basis that brown isn't good for me but nude peach or nude pink would be. OMFG I swear I have never looked so awful, if anything the nude pink lip was worse, to her credit Em was stood behind the SA doing the fingers down throat pukey thing throughout!  Finally I caved and agreed with the SA and Em that a nude lip wasnt working on me.  We had a little group hug at this point.  They might have high fived as well, I think. Ok ladies, I am getting the message.

 When I said to the SA "ok what would YOU put on me" she did a little dance and hauled out a lip liner pencil and the lip gloss you have been seeing in the pics threaded through this post.  She was a lovely girl but clearly thought my lip line was pointless and created one of her own for me - I looked like a blow up doll.  But, I loved the colour.  Very opaque pinky mauve, no nasty shimmer, applies like a gloss but wears like a lipstick, no stickyness, no lip staining just lovely glossy lips.

 You would probably have liked a bit of warning about that pic wouldn't you?!!

Not sure why I look like a beady eyed freak in this. I just do!

One more pic, above, taken today (Mon) which also shows how layering and buffing my foundation has improved things on that front. I had a couple of goes and in the end found putting the foundation on with 187 MAC brush and then buffing with a soft fat brush seemed to do the trick.

What I really like about this gloss is that it is really opaque so even wearing only a little gives a really nice full colour effect.  That said I squeezed the tube a bit too hard this morning and ended up with a heap of stuff on my lips, the lipstick shaped applicator is great for moving the gloss where you want it, and my heavy handed application resulted in me looking like my lips were made of super glossy plastic. On me thats erring into TV territory, but on some lovely young thing with poochy, pillowy lips would look beyond sexay!  Just so you know the swatch on my hand and the tube pics are colour accurate, clearly my face sucks the colour out of stuff which is why it doesnt look too exciting on my lips in these pics, in real life its a fresh, luscious pink pop and I right proper love it!



Illamasqua Intense lip gloss in Move £13.  Am thinking I might need to try a red one of these at some point!

FOTD - when bad eye shadow happens to good people

After yesterdays rather dull neutral FOTD I decided today I wanted to incorporate the blue in a more wearable, day friendly eye.

Please bear in mind that I get up at 5.50am. I have to be ready to run Em down the hill at 6.50am and in that time I have to shower, beat my hair into submission and do my "face". Mistakes are not an option. So this morning I slapped on my UDPP and grabbed the blue matte Revlon shadow and whacked it all over the mobile lid. So far so blah. So thought I'd try blending. Now have an eyelid with nasty patchy stains and blue eye shadow all over one hand.  At this point my options were a) do breakfast for guests with one blue eye or b) slap some blue onto 2nd eye and hope applying foundation would balance things out.  Once I had smeared blue eye shadow over 2nd eye decided only way out was to then apply the same blue to the crease.  At this point I looked like the "before" from "Ten Years Younger" as in "Debbie is aware that she has been stuck in an eye shadow rut for 20 yrs and is still wearing the same blue eye shadow she wore in 1986".  In an absolute panic I wiped a smear of Buck from the Naked palette into the crease and attempted some kind of blending action.

see what I mean? Not exactly fab is it but not a bad recovery if you had seen the dire big blue mess I was before adding the brown!
 
Emily came in and took one look at my blue stained hands and masses of tissues all covered in blue matte eye shadow (bloody stuff wont blend but it does get everywhere!) and said I looked like a kid who had nicked her mums make up kit. And she still expected a lift down the hill.

I had a go at mixing some of the GOSH Cappuccino and the Revlon Matte in Mink to make a slightly darker nude lippy.  Off for a facial this pm and need to buy a nude lip pencil, as my Bobbi Brown Cocoa one leans too orange to work with this colour.  Also need to invest in some kind of lip buff and lip primer I think.
Onwards and upwards folks, not a triumphant fotd but I think its good to share the lash ups too!